All the World is a Stage
by Vaughn Tyler
Summary: Everything burns eventually. Some people just help it happen sooner rather than later. / This is a new story about a girl who set out to Gotham to find her father, but found a Clown in his place and a Bat desprate to keep her away from him.
1. Scene 0

**Summary**: Everything burns eventually. Some people just help it happen sooner rather than later. / This is a new story about a girl who set out to Gotham to find her father, but found a Clown in his place and a Bat desprate to keep her away from him.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Batman or the Joker or the DC universe. I only own my OFC, Kida Novak.

**Warnings**: mentions of sex, strong language, Joker's demented mind, and sporadic updates

**Author's Note**: This is just a preview chapter. All other chapters will be far longer and contain more action. I just had to get this up today. Kida, the character, has been haunting me for weeks now and I haven't found a true place for her until today. I hope that she is happy here, where the spotlight will always be on her.

**All the World is a Stage****: Scene 0:** Five Things  
by Vaughn Tyler

I know five things for certain when I got off the bus in Gotham City:

Number one, Lisa Novak, my mother, almost named me Jill to match my father's name. At the last moment she changed her mind, and as a result I was christened Kida after some distant Aunt who still lives in Europe.

Fact number two, my mother was born in Gotham City, and she never left the (hellish) place until about a month before I was born.

Three, I look nothing like my mother or her round faced Czech family. Therefore I can reasonably draw the conclusion I must look like my father, or at least similar to him. If this is true he'll probably be tall, skinny, boney, light haired, dark eyed, and pale skinned.

Number four, my charisma, over active imagination, and inability to sit still may also be traits I share with my father. The majority of the members of the Novak family are level headed, easy going, and patient people. I am not. This is nurture vs. nature speculation though, so it might have to be disregarded.

And lastly, fact number five (probably the most important one), I may not live long enough to complete my quest to find my father.

In summary I am in one of the most dangerous cities in the world looking for my father for whom I only have a small clue about his first name and the assumption that I may look like him. _Yeah,_ I thought taking my first few steps onto one of Gotham's sidewalks. _I'm beginning to question my sanity too._ After all, I'm 18 years old and I was connived in this city 19 years ago. My father might not even be here anymore.


	2. Scene 1

**Summary**: Everything burns eventually. Some people just help it happen sooner rather than later. / This is a new story about a girl who set out to Gotham to find her father, but found a Clown in his place and a Bat desprate to keep her away from him.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Batman or the Joker or the DC universe. I only own my OFC, Kida Novak.

**Warnings**: mentions of sex, strong language, Joker's demented mind, and sporadic updates

**Author's Note**: This is just a preview chapter. All other chapters will be far longer and contain more action. I just had to get this up today. Kida, the character, has been haunting me for weeks now and I haven't found a true place for her until today. I hope that she is happy here, where the spotlight will always be on her.

**All the World is a Stage****: Scene 1:** The Beginning  
by Vaughn Tyler

Sunday, May 03

As I filled out the witness report I allowed my mind to drift back to my middle school years. Mostly my eight grade speech class. I remembered our first assignment: the dreaded standard introductory paper. After committing the speech to memory for the presentation I've never forgotten it.

"_When some parents are asked where babies come from they answer with something along the lines of, 'When two people love one another very much they hug a cretin, special way. Then, nine months later, they become the proud parents of a bouncing bundle of joy known as a baby.'_

"_I did not come from such a union. You see alcohol can compel a man and a woman who barely know one another and are intensely drunk to have fumbling sex in a back ally. Through this scenario of child conception only the woman is left with a squirming, fleshy reminder of why it is very bad to do that. This is where I come from. I was both a mistake and a miracle to my mother. Her pregnancy gave her enough of a backbone to stand up to her parents…"_

The speech went on for a bit and into a description of how my mother stood up to her parents, forced the entire family to move away from Gotham, and raised me into a decent human being. But, honestly, it wasn't important right now. Delilah Shaw was more important.

From what I understood, Delilah was a single mother without the backing of the rest of her family. The proud woman had spent the last eight years raising her daughter, Lily, alone in a small apartment just on the right side of the Narrows. She scrapped by working long hours at her secretarial job at Wayne Industries and did her best for Lily.

I knew all this because Lily has been hanging onto my arm since I witnessed her mother's mugging four hours ago. A man had knifed Delilah in the side for her cranberry red handbag that contained seven dollars and fifty-two cents, a trashy cell phone, some make up, and her 99' Saturn's car keys. Jeffery Skyes was the nineteen year old assailant and the police had already caught him due to my description. It was an open and shut case, but such a case that would ruin a bright little girl's life forever.

Child services came and took Lily away twenty minutes later, and some nameless blonde cop thanked me for all my help. Just like that I was back out on the streets like I had been for the past month and a half.

One month didn't seem like an appropriate measure of time for how long I've been in Gotham City. 19 fires, 3 bank robberies, 9 deaths, 2 mass breakouts, and no clues about my father seemed like a more appropriate measurement. It was slightly terrifying and more then slightly exciting to be in such a city. For the past fourteen years, I've dreamt of coming to this crime ridden place and finding the man that helped conceive me, but my dreams now seemed like silent black and white films in comparison the loud and bright reality I live in.

Cars blared by and down the street sirens sounded, people were everywhere, talking, laughing, living, and all I could do was bight the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. Even with the death, and the lack of leads, I loved it here. With a vague sense of elation I wondered if MIT would be anything like this.


End file.
